What’s all the buzz about? Periscope 101

Periscope is, “the best way to share and watch live video broadcasts from your mobile phone.”

In effort to keep you up to date on the latest trends and activates in social media, I’d like to introduce you all to Periscope. You may have seen this in some of our recent emails, recaps, or event schedules, and I want to draw notice as it will become increasingly important to the way we connect with people.

Live streaming is the latest break-through in social media, and the Twitter-owned app Periscope is making huge strides in the area with its new, user-friendly updates. One way to think about Periscope is, “… a visual pulse of what’s happening right now.”

With a simple touch of a button, users can instantly stream live video for others to watch. The team at Periscope describes the purpose behind the app as, “We built Periscope to let people discover the world through someone else’s eyes and in just a matter of days have taken us all around the globe — to nearly every country in the world.”

From a business perspective, Periscope will play a key role in reaching new audiences, and ultimately generating awareness for our brand and products, since anyone, from anywhere, can watch these live-streaming videos. A few ways we have been using Periscope are:

-Sharing “behind-the-scenes” footage

-Live streaming events in our kitchen

-Cooking classes and Q&A

-Meetings

We are looking forward to live grower tours, event walk through, sales training, and limited time consumer sales events.

Here are a few easy steps to help you get started:

Watch

After downloading the app and signing in, you’re taken to your feed. Your feed is where you will find current live streams from friends and random users throughout the world.

Stream

Now this is the best part—streaming your own videos! The first time you stream, you need to grant Periscope access to your camera, microphone, and location. After granting permission for all three, you’ll be asked to give your live-stream a title. The title should be whatever it is that you plan on streaming. An example of a recent Periscope title we used is, “Blending a healthy summer smoothie with @TheBlenderGirl and the new #TorrentBlender.”

Then, you need to decide if you want to give everyone access to see your stream, or if you only want to invite a select few. Also, you can have Periscope send a tweet on your behalf announcing your broadcast.

While you’re streaming live, your audience can comment and you can view comments as they come in. You can also switch from the front camera, to the back camera on your phone, with a simple double tap.

Once you end the stream, Periscope will begin uploading the video automatically. But you can cancel the upload any time by tapping on the progress bar.

People

Another feature in the app is the People section. This is where you can find/follow more users, view who’s watching, and adjust your settings.